As evidence mounts that North Korea is preparing to launch a long-range missile  possibly, an InterContinental Ballistic Missile with enough range to reach the United States  President Obama no longer has to put U.S. nuclear forces on alert or threaten a pre-emptive first strike on North Korea, thanks to national missile defense interceptors deployed in California and Alaska.

When North Korea conducted its first test of a missile with ICBM capabilities in 2006, some [of the President Bushs advisors] were urging him to launch a pre-emptive attack on North Korea, Lt. Gen. Henry A. Trey Obering III reveals in a soon-to-be released documentary produced by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Unhappy with that option, President Bush rushed into deployment sea-based missile defense systems on board of Aegis-class cruisers in the Pacific that were still under development and had never been used in combat. He also placed on alert the handful of silo-based interceptors his administration had installed at Fort Greely, Alaska starting in July 2004, and ordered his commanders to intercept and destroy any incoming North Korean missile, something they had never done under battlefield conditions before.

The president would not have had that option without the $100 billion the United States taxpayer has invested in missile defense research and deployed systems since 1983, Lt. Gen. Obering and other experts interviewed in the new Heritage Foundation documentary said.

Lacking credible missile defense systems, the only other ability you have is to apologize to those that die, Lt. Gen. Obering said. Not to develop such systems would be morally bankrupt, he added.

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